lost highway

David Lynch is a director known for many things: dream sequences, surreal visuals, intense noise, and maybe above all, sex. Sex is a large trademark of Lynch and he almost never uses it conventionally. It always has a purpose, and usually, a dark one. From “Blue Velvet” to “Twin Peaks”, these are the scenes that stick with you.

David Lynch is having a bit of a moment. Yes, it’s outside of the film world, but of course it still has all of Hollywood (and us) intrigued. The surrealist director — whose credits include BLUE VELVET, LOST HIGHWAY, ERASERHEAD and MULHOLLAND DRIVE — has a naughty love for women, organic coffee, quinoa and, not surprisingly, champagne, which led to his collaboration with Dom Pérignon.

TITANIC re-hits theaters today in 3D. Of course, unless you’ve been living under a rock you already knew that. It’s okay if you’ve been living under a rock. I certainly was back in 1997! I never saw TITANIC and I don’t really think it entered into my consciousness much back then. My ‘rock’ in this situation was my own teenage malaise and the fact that there was no Joy Division on the film’s soundtrack. Back in 1997 I was a senior in high school who had just secured a New York State driver’s license and spent most of my time studying for AP exams, going to punk shows and wishing I was just in college already. I did manage to see some movies, and a few of them were pretty awesome! So, let’s travel back in time to the year that George Clooney was Batman, Keanu Reeves was married to Charlize Theron and Meatloaf drove the Spice Girls around to check out five films we’d happily pay to see in the theater again (especially if we are talking about 1997 prices):

Never let it be said that David Lynch takes sex lightly. To quote the man himself: “Certain aspects of sex are troubling — the way it’s used as power, for instance, or the way it takes the form of perversions that exploit other people.” And those “certain aspects” seem to be the only ones that interest Lynch. In his world, no one ever cracks up in bed after an inopportune fart ruins the moment. But no one has glamorized, Hollywood-ized, unrealistic sex either. “Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical,” Lynch said once, “but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way.” And by “flat” he either means “more fake than a declaration of true love on THE BACHELOR” or else “specializing in female subjugation, exploitation and masochism.” Whatever the case may be, the kind of sex his characters have — and the kind of sex his movies deal with — are best described as simply Lynchian, a term which has been defined as “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane.” This top 10 list, in chronological order, should help further explain:

Although his last two albums, 29 and Jacksonville City Nights offered a respite of sorts, ever since the 2005 release of Cold Roses, Ryan’s head has been Dead set; even his Town Hall stint [stereogum.com] and recent Rollins Show performance of the Easy Tiger cut “Goodnight Rose” saw him appease his inner Jerry’s kid. But…